Richmond Lee statue will fall
At press time, the statue of Robert E. Lee in downtown Richmond still stands—but that won’t be the case for long, as the statue is slated to come down on Wednesday, September 8. Last summer, Governor Ralph Northam ordered the statue’s removal, and a recent Virginia Supreme Court ruling confirmed that the state does in fact have a legal right to take the monument down.
The city will have to chop the statue up on the spot in order to haul away the 60-foot-tall monstrosity. There are no plans to remove Lee’s stone pedestal, which is still covered in graffiti from last summers’ protests.
The area around the statue, informally known as Marcus-David Peters Circle, in honor of a Black biology teacher who was killed by Richmond police, will remain a community gathering space.
Protesters gathered at the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond last summer.
Richard Spencer flounders
Richard Spencer, the white nationalist UVA alum who played a key role in the 2017 Unite the Right rally, isn’t doing so well these days, according to a New York Times report published over the weekend. The Times story says that Spencer “is now an outcast” in his Whitefish, Montana, home, that his organization has fallen apart, and that he can’t pay for a lawyer for his upcoming appearance in the trial over Unite the Right.
“Richard Spencer wanted [Whitefish] to be his happy vacation place where he could play and have fun, and people would just live and let live,” area Rabbi Francine Green Roston told the Times. “Then he started suffering social consequences for his hatred.”
“The Court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”
—Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Texas abortion ban to stand
In brief
Planning commission hears (lots of) zoning comments
Debate continues around the city’s new Comprehensive Plan and subsequent zoning overhaul. Last week’s Planning Commission meeting lasted for more than five hours, with dozens of speakers tuning in to offer their opinions on the map. Some, especially those who live in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family housing only, have advocated for the continued existence of single-family-only neighborhoods. Others want increased housing density throughout the city, and especially in neighborhoods where dense development isn’t currently allowed. Watch this space for updates as the process continues.
Good says hello to UVA
Congressman Bob Good visited with UVA conservative student group Young Americans For Freedom last week, reports the Cavalier Daily. Good delivered his usual shtick: “We absolutely have a border invasion on the southern border right now,” the congressman said, before disparaging Democrats’ new voting rights act and downplaying the need to take preventative measures against COVID-19.
Bullet fired through Boylan bathroom injures one
A customer was shot at Boylan Heights in the early hours of Saturday morning when a bullet was accidentally discharged and went through the wall of one bathroom to another. The female victim, who was hit in the arm, is in stable condition, reports a UVA community alert, and an arrest has been made.